


Interns Don't Serve Coffee (And Fifteen Other Things Merlin Learned at the Ealdor Gazette)

by halfnorn



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-08-10
Updated: 2010-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-11 00:54:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfnorn/pseuds/halfnorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was fifteen years old, Merlin discovered that 'wizard' was no longer a paying vocation. Going into his first internship at the Ealdor Gazette under Arthur Pendragon some five years later, he may be starting to regret thinking journalism was the next best option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interns Don't Serve Coffee (And Fifteen Other Things Merlin Learned at the Ealdor Gazette)

**Author's Note:**

> In which I fall to the temptations of take-your-fandom-to-work fics, and I swear in my own experience people you deal with at local weeklies are vastly kinder and more helpful than some of the individuals *coughArthurcough* to be found in this fic. Beta'd by my lovely mainstay mpoetess, who rocks the hizzouse.

Merlin was four years old when he first realised that he was magic.

It wasn't, really, that he hadn't known before – it was just that he hadn't _known_, hadn't understood that normal children couldn't pull their toys home from across the room when they got upset, that other boys and girls weren't able to make their blankets fluffier and warmer if they got cold, couldn't change the colour of their paints when they were bored.

It was then that he started to explore. Picture books, at first. Then as he grew older, normal books, books with words in them, books that talked about amazing things that you could do if only you put your mind to it. Books that showed him new worlds and new things to try, that gave him heroes who could do what he did and accomplished impossible things, even if they were only a janitor in their day-to-day life, or maybe an accountant.

Reading was freedom. It gave colour to the drab world around him, gave him ideas, made him long for that final escape that was sure to come: that lost princess who would sweep down out of the darkness, pleading for his help; the sudden destiny that would be revealed to him, and change his life forever. Waited for his teacher to come and show him how to use his magic to paint the canvas of his life and grant him his true purpose.

Merlin was twelve years old when he first realised that Hogwarts wasn't real. He stopped waiting.

When he was fifteen, he met Uncle Gaius, who could do magic, but the old man just shrugged in the face of his excitement and said, "That's all well and good, Merlin, but you're going to have to learn a proper job. No one pays for the magical arts any longer, and you'd best get yourself a craft to focus on."

So when Merlin turned eighteen, he put away the last of his magic books and signed up for a journalism course at the local college, and told himself repeatedly that being able to make flames dance in private was a rather brilliant thing all on its own and he shouldn't wish for more.

But that last bit never quite took.

-

It was a beautiful spring day, the air heavy with the scent of rain that hadn't seen fit to fall just yet and the song of birds returning to the lands of Albion. In any other situation, Merlin would have taken the time to really enjoy it, to sniff at the sky and wave to a passing goose, but it was the first day of his internship and he was really, utterly, catastrophically _late_.

Also, lost.

"Excuse me!" he called, after his fifth lap through Ealdor's main streets had turned out to be less than fruitful. It'd been years since he'd last lived there, and he didn't remember it being so bloody huge; he was starting to wonder if maybe they'd torn down the city of his birth while he wasn't looking and put in a whole new one, ready to confuse anyone who hadn't been there for more than five years in a row.

So new tactics were kind of really important right now.

"Excuse me!" he called again, waving his arms around in the air in a desperate attempt to catch the postman's attention. "Look! I think I'm a bit lost, could you please-- Hello?!"

The mailman moved about an inch, his head tilting just enough to expose both his mildly puzzled expression and the long line of the iPod headphones in his ears. "Pardon?"

"Oh thank god!" Merlin exclaimed, relieved, and sent a grateful grin in the man's direction. He tugged on the straps of his backpack. "I'm a bit lost," he continued, raising his voice so the mailman could hear him, "And I was wondering if you know the way to the offices of the Ealdor Gazette...?"

The look on the mailman's face didn't really change much, compared to the whole puzzlement thing he'd had going on earlier. Once again, Merlin felt himself starting to despair: had he wandered off into completely the wrong end of the city? Was he even in the _right_ city, or had he taken a wrong turn at Esctir earlier without realising it?

Thusly preoccupied, it took him a few seconds to notice another important detail about his conversational partner – which was that the man had lifted his hand up and extended his index finger, pointing, rather clearly, at something just over Merlin's shoulder. (For a moment, Merlin wondered if he'd accidentally conjured up a second head, or an owl, or something equally horrifyingly revealing, but then he grasped the idea that the man wasn't pointing _at_ his shoulder but behind it, and that sort of settled his suddenly rapidly-beating heart)

He turned around slowly, and stared, uncomprehendingly, at the pretty glass door with the neat little sign that read _Ealdor Gazette_ in understatedly professional lettering on the front.

"Oh," he said.

"You're welcome, son," said the mailman, and stuffed his earbud back into place.

-

"Hello?" Merlin asked, carefully poking his head in the door before he continued his streak and did something mortifying all over the floor of his paper's - _his_ paper, for the next few months, and maybe in time that thought would stop sending a thrill down his spine, but not any time soon! - lobby, which couldn't possibly qualify anywhere as a good first impression.

Unfortunately, it also meant the receptionist barely even noticed him.

"Er," he said, "Sorry, I'm looking for--" He shoved at the door, and promptly stumbled over the step, but at least his chin didn't wind up on the floor so in terms of 'mortifying', he was still ahead of the curve. As it were. "...I'm looking for an A. Pendragon? I'm the new intern, I just got here, I'm a bit late because of--"

Because of what, exactly? Because he'd been an idiot and he hadn't read the directions properly and he hadn't bothered to think about asking because-- because well, he'd been terrified, that's what, and seeing as how it would be his first day on the job _ever_, he had a right to be.

The receptionist watched him flail impassively. "Through the back, first door on your left."

Merlin gave her a grateful nod, because he wasn't about to argue with that. No. No more worse impressions today: he was _good_ at this, and maybe he hadn't done it in a professional context before, but that didn't change the fact he was, and he liked it, and that mattered. "Right, thanks!" he said, reassured, and bustled past the counter onto the workfloor.

Of the newsroom. An _actual_ newsroom. He could feel the smile flooding back onto his face: a newsroom! No dingy, improvised, claustrophobic attic in his college building, where students had to spend more time convincing their interviewees that they were legitimate journalists than actually legitimately interviewing them; it was clean, and nice, and there were computers for everyone, and stacks upon stacks of papers everywhere.

The room – towards the back, first on the left – was empty but for a stately, tall woman with long raven hair and white skin and well-manicured nails that tapped away on the keyboard like she'd pounded it into submission years ago. She was squinting in concentration at her screen, and barely even looked up as Merlin entered.

That had to be A. Pendragon. She looked... well, she looked a little intimidating, but he'd expected that: she _was_ an actual journalist, if for a local paper, and you could tell by the way she sat that she'd had a lot of experience already.

At that point in your career, Merlin figured, you didn't tend to worry about an awful lot when it came to the daily grind. "Hi," he said, eager to make a good impression, "I'm Merlin, the new intern? I'm sorry I'm late, I think they switched the streets about since the last time I was here--"

"It's fine," she said, abruptly pulling away from her computer to smile at him. "You don't have to stand there looking so terrified. Come in, take a seat!"

"Right!"

Taking a seat. Taking a seat. Merlin glanced around, letting his eyes drift over the décor again. Red office chair there, another one there-- he pulled one up, checking once to make sure it was actually located underneath his bottom before he tried to sit down. Experience had taught him that much. "This is a really nice office," he said.

Pendragon rolled her eyes, and bit down on the tip of her pen. "It's an office built for ten people back in the 80s, and now it just holds two and a decade's worth of broken equipment," she said, idly. "It's hardly a downtown highrise."

His smile dimmed a few notches. "Right," he repeated. Great. It was his first day, and he was already looking terribly stupid in front of his new boss. This couldn't possibly get worse. "So, er-- this is where you tell me when I should be making coffee and everything, right?"

"Don't be ridiculous," said Pendragon. "No enforced coffee runs, no communal lunches, no paper-pushing. You'll be out on assignment quite a bit, most likely." She tapped her pen against her front teeth this time. "Or rather, you will once I get _done_ with him."

Merlin frowned. "...Done with who?"

"Arthur," she said, easily. "Your boss? You wouldn't be the first intern we've gotten here as of late – he always tries the whole bring-me-my-coffee routine, but the honest truth is that Uther has just laid off half the company and we need every bit of cheap labour we can get out there, making stories. And he takes his paper _very_ seriously." A pause. "_Too_ seriously, considering half of what we write is about the local school plays."

He was horribly confused, and probably looked the part; she set her pen down, clearly taking pity on him. (For a moment, he thought she was actually going to pat him on the head)

"I'm Morgana le Fay," she said, extending her hand for a shake instead. "I run the papers for the next two towns over. Arthur's currently _indisposed_; I imagine he's up at headquarters right now, yelling about how interns aren't going to solve his staffing problem. Like I said, he's a bit of an overachiever."

"Okay." Merlin dropped Morgana's hand very, very slowly – it was more of a gentle placing-on-the-desk, really – and tried to parse everything she had just said accordingly. "So I'll just be--"

"Sitting behind your computer and going through a few issues of the Ealdor Gazette," she said, patting him on the hand like he was a skittish gazelle, and got up. "Over there in the corner is every issue that's come out over the past ten years. Get a good feel for it, ignore Arthur when he gets here, and you'll be fine."

'You'll be fine' would turn out to be a very creative interpretation of Merlin's future, all-in-all.

-

"I cannot _believe_ him!"

This was Merlin's first introduction to Arthur Pendragon: a blond force of nature stomping his way into the office, brandishing a folder like it was a medieval sword and spitting insults that seemed to be all the more obscene for the posh inflection he used to enunciate every. Single. One of them. It knocked him cold in the chest, part surprise and part something else--

\--and that was when Pendragon turned to him, still holding that folder in front of him, and said, all disdain, "_You_."

If Merlin had something that even remotely resembled a sense of self-preservation, he might have said something that wasn't, "Yeah, me." He might have kept quiet, or tried to make himself as small as possible, or possibly seek Morgana's assistance, but he did none of it. What he said was, "I'm the new intern," no apologies attached, no hiding, no nothing.

It made Pendragon's admittedly attractive face twist away from disdain – which was something – and into anger – which was less of something. Merlin wondered briefly if maybe it had been a better idea not to piss off his boss, but there was really no way back from where he had already gone.

"I can _see_ that!" he snapped. "You know, we had to drop a good journalist in exchange for you last year, so you can at least do us all the favour of keeping your mouth shut!"

Merlin held up his hands. "Look, I can see that you're angry, but I wasn't here back then," he started, patiently. "And anyway I'm not the one who approved me working here, so I don't know why you're yelling at _me_. It's hardly my fault."

The look on Pendragon's face made it clear that _because you're here_ was probably the likely reason, and that really wasn't fair in Merlin's book. He was just here to learn, not to offer up his self-esteem to someone who obviously needed an outlet; if he was mistaken about that, the company had better start paying him a lot better, or internship or no internship, he was gone.

He bit down on his lip before the words, "Have you considered boxing?" could slip out, which was probably a good thing, because Arthur looked murderous for a brief second longer before turning, abruptly, to Morgana.

"More budget cuts," he said. "Say goodbye to your ability to bully anyone into rearranging your page templates, because they've just fired five more at page make-up."

Merlin took a deep breath, feeling as if a heavy weight had left him along with Pendragon's gaze. He fidgeted with the edge of the paper in front of him, that said _Harbour concert great success!_ underneath the Ealdor Gazette logo, and started to wonder if maybe what he'd just done hadn't been exactly the right choice.

"Oh, for god's sake," Morgana groused. "They can't keep doing that! Sometimes you've just got to rebuild a bloody template--"

Considering that Merlin had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, exactly, the rest of the details of their conversation flew mostly over his head. He was grateful for it, though: the last thing he needed was to push Pendragon even harder, even though he kind of deserved it. Maybe if Merlin kept his head down long enough, everything would blow over, and he'd at least not get beheaded in the next three months.

Finally, they seemed to bring their tete-a-tete to a mutually satisfying end, or at least Merlin assumed so. Phrases like 'quarters' and 'halves' stopped flying around, anyway, and Pendragon wrenched his head away from Morgana and fixed his furious eyes on Merlin once again. "All right, you," he said, "Intern monkey. Coffee. Now."

Merlin's eyes slid almost naturally towards Morgana, whose expression was quietly amused. She shook her head lightly, a smirk playing around her lips. Right. He scraped his throat. "That's not my job, I think, Mr. Pendragon," he said, "And I'm not doing anything until you apologise to me."

He really didn't have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever, did he?

"..._Where_ did Father find this one?" Pendragon snapped, his entire body yanking off Morgana's desk as if it had been burned. "You do realise you are talking to your supervisor, and I can easily fail your arse so badly they won't even let you work for the Old Ladies' Knitting Rag?"

"Doesn't mean you get to be rude to me." In for a penny, in for a pound.

And then Pendragon _snarled_: honest to God, teeth and all, and at this point Merlin wasn't sure he honestly wouldn't be beheaded. But that snarl twisted into a smile, a mocking, angry little thing, and Pendragon turned around and marched suddenly towards his desk.

As soon as his back was turned, Merlin leaned over towards Morgana's desk, and hissed, "Was that a good thing?" He really couldn't tell. So far, in ten minutes' time, Pendragon's mood had shifted from one extreme to another, and he had absolutely no idea how to interpret any of it. Morgana just smiled at him, and patted his hand.

"Just call him Arthur," she whispered back, "He loves it when your sort do that."

She didn't have time to say anything else, because Pendragon returned, brandishing yet another sheet of paper, and slammed it down on Merlin's desk as if it could explode any second. "Hospital," he said, "Some new children's ward. Call the number, set up a meeting, get me a quarter."

Quarter? What was a quarter? Desperately, Merlin tried to recall their conversation of a few minutes previous, where he'd heard the word but he'd had no idea what it was. Quarter. In what context? What was a quarter?

"Oh, cat got your tongue _now_, has it?" Pendragon asked, sounding positively gleeful. "I want that back for Wednesday's paper. If you don't get it to me by three tomorrow, I'm calling your school supervisor."

Merlin stared at him. "But," he said, finally, remembering well enough how he had only barely overcome his terror at the idea of picking up the phone for school projects previously, let alone going out and interviewing someone about something he had never heard anything about, ever. "But, aren't you supposed to--"

"Supposed to _what_?" Pendragon's eyebrows went up invitingly. "Well?"

"...Let me tag along," Merlin said, weakly, "You know, guide me through my first week..."

"Nonsense," he replied. "You seem to be doing fairly well for yourself. I'm sure if we drop you in the deep end, you'll learn how to dogpaddle."

Oh god. Merlin swallowed back against the lump in his throat, curled his fingers against the assignment sheet in front of him, and promised himself he'd start looking into a spell to turn Pendragon's hair blue as soon as he got home, just for calming purposes. Oh _god_.

-

An hour later, Merlin was convinced the phone was staring at him. It had to be. The red light only blinked whenever he looked at it, and he swore he'd caught the display lighting up at least once when his eyes had finally flicked back at the monstrous thing after being removed from it for about five seconds.

He still hadn't phoned.

Right. This was stupid. He'd gotten over his fear of telephones back in school and there was absolutely no reason why one angry, rude, mean, and unfairly attractive boss could throw him off his game this much. In fact.

In fact, why should he let Pen-- _Arthur_ beat him? He had every right to be here. The company had brought him in on an intern's salary, his supervisor at school was happy with his preparation, and he'd only gotten good marks over the past few semesters.

There was absolutely no reason for him to act like anyone was going to bite him for it.

He picked up the phone, and dialed the number. (Well, on the third go. He messed up the numbers rather spectacularly on the first, and then wound up calling someone else entirely on the second. Still, it was a small success)

"Vivian Nolake, press representative for Ealdor Regional Hospital, how may I help you?"

Her voice was cool, professional. Okay. He could do this.

"Merlin Emrys, er, int--" Don't say intern. Don't say intern, or she'll think you're a loser. "Correspondent for the Ealdor Gazette," he segued, smoothly. To be honest, he did feel a little thrill at being able to say the words, even if the paper wasn't that big. He belonged to it now, like he hadn't before. That meant... something.

"Yes?"

Realising he'd paused too long, Merlin scrambled. "Er, we heard about the new-- onco-- ucle-- cancer ward," he said, "And we'd like to do a piece on its development. Would you have time for an interview either today or tomorrow morning?"

There was a brief silence. Then: "I'm available at four PM this afternoon. Ask for me at the desk. We'll talk details up front, I will introduce you to one of the doctors, and then we'll have a chat _afterwards_. I hope this is good with you--"

"It's fine!"

"--and don't be late."

"I won't." Merlin smiled at the phone for a few seconds, and then it struck him that she couldn't actually see it. "Thanks," he added, sincerely.

And well, if he wasn't mistaken, there was a little bit of a crack in the professional demeanour he could hear in her answering,"You're welcome."

There. See? Piece of cake. No reason to worry.

-

All right, so maybe there was _some_ reason to worry.

Merlin had always known that Ealdor, for all that it was a small town, had a very large hospital. It had been established here over a century ago, and it had simply kept growing since, swallowing a good chunk of the outlying areas. He'd never been there, really. He was accident-prone, but his bones were strong and his skin healed quickly and he very rarely got sick.

So he'd never actually seen it in person before.

"Oh god," he mumbled. It was huge. It was the size of a skyscraper. It was the size of a small neighbourhood, and he was expected to go in there and do this interview. Right. He swallowed. He could-- he could do this.

He recalled Pendragon's smug face, and set his jaw. It would probably be perfectly fine. After all, he was the press now, and people wanted to be nice to the press, right?

"You'll be fine," said a tiny voice near his feet, and Merlin broke off his train of thought with regards to the former to look down. Down on the ground in the sunny grass stood a tiny gnome, puffing a pipe, his belly fat and his cheeks rosy. "You're a talented feller, like."

He had to smile a little. "Thanks," he said, rubbing at his wrist, feeling self-conscious. "I mean, obviously I can do this. I've done it before. It's just real now, you know? And in the new, non-magical realm. It's just... different."

The gnome reached out and patted his calf soothingly. "It looks like a big scary place," he said, "But the humans in there are rotten self-involved. She'll be squealing like a piglet for hours. You'll do fine. We're all rooting for you, kid."

Merlin gripped his notepad more firmly. They were right, really. He'd interviewed _centaurs_ before (although obviously he hadn't called her such in the article he'd turned in), what was one human press representative going to do to him anyway? "You're completely right," he said. "I'm going to go in and do this. And tell the others I said hi, yeah?"

"Got my word for it," the gnome promised him, "That's my boy." He let go of Merlin's calf and wandered back into the undergrowth, slipping under a toadstool and into the dark, earthy gnome-world below.

With a little nod at himself, Merlin took his pen out of his pocket, and marched upon the hospital. He was going to kill this interview right dead, and he was going to wave it in Arthur's face, and then the man would have to acknowledge that he wasn't some stupid, barely-washed-behind-the-ears idiot Arthur could abuse just because he felt like it.


End file.
